Hola Everyone!

We have arrived in Buenos Aires (BA) and had quite a lively few days here. We were picked up from the airport and had to endure an hour long, rather scary taxi ride to our hostel. The hostel is really nice and we have a big four bed dorm that even has wardrobes in it and everything! We had to have a nap to recover from our early start and we then met our contact from the placement company who told us all about BA and our teaching, which scared us a lot as we are both teaching adult evening classes on our own, and also Jen is scheduled to go to an orphanage where they don?t really speak any English!! As well as that, we are both teaching in local schools but really just as teaching assistants in the classes. So after feeling a little nervous we took up the opportunity to go with another volunteer to one of his classes (which Jen will be taking over next week) so that we could get an idea of what to expect. It made us feel a bit less apprehensive as we basically just sat and chatted to them for an hour as the?English was pretty good. That evening we went out with the other volunteers to a nearby restaurant where we had our first taste of Argentinian steak - it was very nice! We also had stupid amounts of bread, pudding of dulche de leche (an Argentinian speciality and a bit like the toffee sauce you get in banoffee pie), and a few glasses of red wine, and all for around a tenner! Its very cheap here! In BA it seems that you can?t go out for a meal until 9pm at the earliest, so we had a late night despite only going out for dinner.

On Friday we headed into the city centre and visited the Plaza de Mayo which is where the Casa Rosada?is located. This is the President?s residence and is famous for where Evita addressed her fans from the balcony (for those of you?who have seen the film!). We also wandered around the Cathedral, which is a very?unusual building, looking more like a town hall than a cathedral. It was very ornate?and grand inside though. We then wandered down?one of the main streets where we almost ended up in the middle of a demonstration! Apparently they happen on a daily basis in BA but we decided?to avoid it when they?started throwing firecrackers! We walked down the Avenue 9 de Julio (it means 9 of July) which is?claimed to be the widest road in the world as it has 13 lanes!! It was a little scary crossing the road here. We had lunch and then headed back to the hostel before going out to the cinema to watch Spiderman 3 - luckily it was in English. We had dinner nearby and then went to a bar in Palermo?-?which is the area we are staying in - and spent the evening sampling the cocktails, which were far too cheap and rather strong!!

Saturday was mostly spent nursing sore heads (Grandma Cooper -?we fear you maybe right about the alkie thing!). The furthest we got was to the supermarket down the road to stock up on fruit and veg as they don?t seem to serve these in the restaurants! In the evening we headed out for dinner with 3 other volunteers as one of them was leaving the next day. We went to a steakhouse and had the biggest fillet steak ever which was absolutely delicious. We also both tried some blue steak, a bit apprehensive at first but it was really tasty. We decided to pass the offer of heading out to a bar afterwards and went back to the hostel for a brew and our beds.

Today we went out for the most amazing brunch at a place called Olson near the hostel. For the meagre sum of about 7 quid we were treated to canapes including ones with caviar on, a mini bottle of champagne, a large breakfast of scrambled eggs and salmon gravlax (Becki) and grilled veg with marinated chicken (Jen) served with the best roasted potato chips ever, and topped off with a fab pudding!! Needless to say we have been extremely full all afternoon! We did manage to do some activity though as we went over to an area called Recoleta and visited the cemetary there which was unlike anything we?d ever seen. It was full of very grand, huge mausoleums housing the rich and famous of BA, most famous of all being Eva Peron (Evita). It was a really strange place as it felt like you were walking down streets of tombs, and you could look in some and actually see the coffins which was a bit creepy! We then we visited the weekend market at Recoleta which was massive.

We?re not getting up to anything this evening, we feel like all we?ve done since we got here is eat, drink?and sleep! Tomorrow is our first day of lessons so we will let you know how that goes! We are really enjoying BA so far, it seems that theres plenty for us to do here and we?re looking forward to settling in a bit more and getting to grips with the city.

Hope all is well in Blighty.

Lots of love xx xx xx